Google’s analytics tool is an easy way to track your online success through many different channels. Creating an Analytics account is easy – all it takes is registering your email address with Google and then placing a unique tracking code throughout your site. Once this is done, you’ll see all of your site’s statistics pulled into one friendly, interactive reporting piece. Here are some of the top benefits for creating a free Google Analytics account for your site:

Learn about Your Customers
Discover how customers got to your site, see what browsers and operating systems they use and find out their geographic location.

Compare Your Marketing Strategies
Track which of your marketing efforts converted into leads and sales. These results can help you determine which campaigns have been successful and which ones may need to be revamped.

Get Detailed AdWords Information
Connect your Google AdWords account to Analytics for even more in-depth reporting. You’ll see exactly which keywords and ads lead to conversions. For ecommerce sites, Analytics determines your ROI and shows your profits from ads.

Receive Automatic Reports
You can schedule reports from Google Analytics to be emailed to you daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly, to keep you up-to-date on your site statistics with little hassle.

Contact us if you have questions or are interested in Google Analytics for your website. We can get you set up quickly and easily.

SEO can improve the quality and quantity of traffic on your website by directing more targeted traffic to the site through keyword search results. Have questions about Search Engine Optimization and how it works? Below are answers to some frequently asked questions we've come across about the basics of SEO.

Q: Should I try to rank well for a single-word term or a phrase?
A: People more often search for multi-word phrases, because they get more relevant results. Use a tool like Wordtracker to decide which keywords and phrases will be beneficial to your website.

Q: My rankings just changed. Why?
A: Changes in ranking can be the result of changes you made to your site, changes competitors made to their sites or changes the search engine made to their algorithm.

Q: Are any of the ranking changes permanent?
A: There is no way to permanently secure your spot in the rankings. Search engines are constantly modifying their algorithms, and every day new pages appear, some of which will by vying for your spot in the rankings.  

Q: Will search engines begin crawling on the homepage of my website?
A: Search engines evaluate each page on your site individually, based on its merits. It’s possible that some of the inside pages could rank as well or better than your homepage. Remember to think of every page on your site as a possible entryway, and make sure it's able to stand alone.

Q:  Can I make some keywords invisible (white letters on a white background)?
A: Search engines are highly sophisticated, and tricks like this will actually get your site penalized.  If you want to rank highly for certain keywords, make sure they are in the content of your page.

Q: Is using JavaScript a bad idea?
A: Search engines are not going to penalize a site for using standard web technology; however they can’t  follow links that appear only in JavaScript. Make sure that somewhere on the page you have a standard <a href> tag that a search engine can follow.

For better site performance, manageability and limitless scalability potential, we’ve moved to a new development model known as the N-Layer approach. With this approach, we can create reusable libraries that only need to be defined once for your entire application. The benefits of this approach include greater reusability of code, reduction of development time and reduced bugs.

Using the N-Layer model gives us the ability to work with certain layers of your application without affecting others. In addition it allows us to build on top of pre-existing libraries instead of re-inventing the wheel for each project, ensuring that our latest products are built on a solid, well-tested foundation.

Kendra is expecting the adorable little muffin above, who will enter the world next February. She is doing great, and already practicing for the sleep deprivation that will surely come with motherhood! Have advice for the mom-to-be? Leave a comment below for Kendra. 

A client asked me about recommendations for email marketing yesterday, and I could have talked for days. Those who have worked with Wright Strategies know that I feel email marketing has been the #1 success factor for our clients, sometimes even above the website itself.

If you haven’t been emailing your customers, especially in this economy, I encourage you to do so. And if you have, consider upping the ante on your email efforts. Here are some ideas to consider:

• Create an email calendar, and track your results diligently. Learn from what works, and do more of it!
  
• Don’t just track opened and clicked emails; watch your Google Analytics (or whatever tracking software you use) to track conversions, revenue and more.
• Resend email to recipients to those who haven’t opened your email after 3 days.
• Send a special message to people who clicked within your email.
• Try A/B testing – try out a couple subject lines (or other elements) on a small percentage of your audience, and send the one with the best results.
• Don’t forget your landing page! The webpage that emails link to can make a huge difference to your results. Wright Strategies can help you with multivariate testing, to find the landing page that will yield the best results.